UCLA's Keating ready to branch out

He had a job in the canteen at Howard Garfinkel's Four Star Basketball Camp. After work, he could go out and coach teams. This was not Camp Runamuck - Keating already knew what he wanted to do for a living, and he was hanging around Rick Pitino and all of his etceteras. This was more an intern program.

One day Larry Keating, Kerry's dad, showed up and asked Will Klein, the camp's business manager, how Kerry was working out.

"Oh, he's great," Klein said. "He really works hard. He goes to the airport to pick up and drop off everybody."

Keating gulped.

"Will," he said. "He doesn't have his license."

Oops.

Keating is now one of Ben Howland's assistants at UCLA, headed for another Final Four. And winning is the best way to drive your own car.

Right now the head coaching jobs at Long Beach State, Santa Clara and the U. of San Diego are open (although Gonzaga assistant Bill Grier is reportedly close to the USD job).

And who knows what happens when the dam breaks and Kentucky hires Billy Donovan, Rick Barnes, Travis Ford, Billy Gillispie or maybe even Howland?

"It's always been my goal," Keating said at the West Regional. "I'm interested in seeing what the opportunities are. But, being with Coach Howland, I have the best of both worlds."

Keating is 36, but not in coach years.

His dad was an assistant coach at Hofstra and Stonehill. Larry was the athletic director at Adelphi, on Long Island, and then at Seton Hall when P.J. Carlesimo took the Pirates to the '89 NCAA title game.

In a conflicted piece of happenstance, Larry was in San Jose with Kansas, where he's an associate AD. Kerry walked on at Seton Hall and played a minute or two, but he really was another coach for Carlesimo. Already dexterous with videos, he put together Carlesimo's tapes while he was still a student.

"We had a dish, and back then you could pull anything you wanted out of the sky," Larry said. "Kerry was always great with stuff like that."

"Well, dad was always the gadget guy," Kerry said. "But it's like texting a recruit today. That's their culture, it's what they know. You have to communicate in their language."

Keating was a restricted-earnings coach at Wake Forest, when a young Caribbean native named Tim Duncan began to show he might deserve some minutes. Keating got that chance because he knew Wake coach Dave Odom, from Five-Star.

He worked for Jan Breda Kolff at Vanderbilt, where Buzz Peterson was an assistant. "Kerry lived in Buzz's basement," Larry said.

Peterson got other coaching jobs at Appalachian, Tulsa and Tennessee and brought Keating to every one. Keating also worked for George Blaney and Tommy Amaker at Seton Hall.

"Coach Howland was probably the first guy to just call me out of the blue," Keating said. "He was talking to Jimmy Patsos and Doug Wojcik, and then they got head coaching jobs (head coach at Loyola-Maryland and associate coach at Michigan State). So then he turned to me."

If Keating had done nothing else, Howland would still owe him for recruiting Collison, who had not played much on the AAU circuit and was considered a slight, one-dimensional point man at Etiwanda High. But when Keating came to evaluate, Collison's mother June made the connection. She had been a sprinter at Adelphi when Larry was there.

"Kerry calls me and says, 'Who's June Collison?' and I say, 'I don't know,'" Larry said. "Then he kept describing him and I said, oh, you mean June Griffith. She won races at the Millrose Games, in Madison Square Garden, for years."

Nothing beats networking.

Keating also has clear ideas on what he likes and dislikes about a recruit.

ESPN's Rick Majerus jovially described UCLA and Kentucky as places where recruiting is as easy "as inviting an alcoholic to a New Year's Eve party." Maybe it used to be, but UCLA got Michael Roll away from UC Santa Barbara and only beat out Virginia Tech and South Carolina for Mbah a Moute.

"I like to get there early, in warmups, and watch guys," Keating said. "Does he try to make all his layups? Is he finishing his follow-through? How does he interact? During games, I want to see a guy with passion, who's unselfish, who makes the hockey assists - the passes that set up the pass. All those things show character."

Keating also made the list of Top 10 Best-Dressed Assistant Coaches, as chosen by a Web site. Which isn't easy to do on an assistant's wage.

"Oh, he's been around a lot of guys, you know," Larry said. "He found himself on that list and he sort of got into it."

Too much is made of "coaching trees," as if every assistant is a Xerox of his boss. But the school that hires Kerry Keating might be getting the whole orchard.

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